Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday February 04, 2014 @12:45PM
from the oh-you're-still-making-up-your-mind-I-see dept.

New submitter Max McDaniel writes to point out this live stream of the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham concerning the viability of creationism in a scientific age taking place at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky (of which Ham is the founder). Note: the presentation is scheduled for 7 p.m. Eastern; the live feed is likely to remain less interesting until then.

Ken Ham is well spoken and should provide a reasonable point-counterpoint.

I don't think that the idea that we should not wrestle with pigs is the attitude of a responsible scientist. Eventually, all conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. At one time, you'd have been laughed out of a room of distinguished scientists for rejecting geocentricity. An idea has nothing to fear from examination if it is sound.

Ken Ham is well spoken and should provide a reasonable point-counterpoint.

I don't think that the idea that we should not wrestle with pigs is the attitude of a responsible scientist. Eventually, all conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. At one time, you'd have been laughed out of a room of distinguished scientists for rejecting geocentricity. An idea has nothing to fear from examination if it is sound.

The problem with your point is you expect both sides to act like responsible scientists and approach the debate with an open mind. However, the creationists are not interested in being proved wrong as much as punching holes in the other side's arguments so they can say they "won" and gain legitimacy for their point of view. They are not interested in the scientific method, as far as they are concerned the Bible says it so it must be true. That is not a debate. Scientists test theories and see if they continue to explain what they observe, creationists have a belief and anything contrary to that is incorrect. Scientists, by nature, are open to new ideas and generally don't speak in absolutes, which put stem at a disadvantage to those who believe in absolutes. Even scientific language, such as theory, is used to argue that the creationists viewpoint is equally valid since sit is a theory as well; although the creationists generally leave out the crackpot in from of their theory.

It depends on what you mean by "poke holes". I watched a video last night about transitional fossils. Creationist often like to bring them up as an example of a "hole" in evolution. In reality there are hundreds of transitional fossils, but no matter how hard you look, there will always be some gaps. Short of finding every generation linking a modern human to the bacteria from which we evolved there is no way to convince a creationist. At no point do you need to assume that "man is correct about everything he knows" but you can weigh up two options and either choose the one with hundreds of fossils that seem to fit the theory, or the one with no proof which doesn't fit with what we already know.

Exactly; it's not like we have the luxury of fossils existing of every single species to have ever existed. Fossils only form under certain conditions; usually animals decompose when they die, and eventually there's nothing left. Rarely, something different happens, and we're left with a fossil: for instance, an asteroid strikes, or a volcano erupts, or the animal gets stuck in some tar pits. These occurrences are abnormal, so there's no telling how many species we're missing out on because none of their members happened to get caught in a fossil-forming event.

While I think everyone here understands that there will naturally be gaps in the record, I think that's tangential to the point he was trying to make. From what I can gather, he's saying that if evolution was the uniform process we believe it to be, then, all other things being equal, the distribution of fossils based on species should be roughly uniform as well. Put differently, while there will be gaps, we should expect to find a few of a lot of species, rather than a lot of a few. Instead, however, we're

When people think "fossils" they generally think dinosaurs or other large animals. (Note that when I say "large animals" I am including the smallest mouse.) It is extraordinarily rare for a large animal to leave a fossil record, and the fossil record of large animals is extremely random and extremely spotty.

Large animal fossils are extremely glamorous, but often overlooked the largest proportion of fossils we have. The small animal fossils. Animals roughly the size of a grain of sand, such as Forams (phylum foraminifera). Forams are tiny animals that live in the ocean.... trillions of them. Every day vast numbers of forams die and settle down to the deep dark cold sea floor, in the slowly accumulating sediment. Forams have often elaborate mineral "skeletons" called tests. Every day vast numbers of these tests become ideal fossils in the undisturbed see floor sediment. Sediment that very slowly builds up in virtually perfect layers.

Back in the 1970's oil companies developed technology for deep sea oil exploration and started bringing up long exploratory drill cores from the deep seabed. Each drill core was filled with tens of thousands tests. An effectively limitless supply of ideal perfectly layered fossils.

We have a continuous and complete fossil record spanning tens of millions of years for a large chunk of phylum foraminifera. Not merely a continuous and complete record of each transitional species, but a continuous and complete record of all the transitional forms along each species-to-species transition. A continuous and complete record tracing diverse foram species back to a common ancestor.

(Note: The group "forams" is roughly equivalent to the group "mammals". There are herbivores and carnivores and even forams that grow internal algae farms. So when I say "diverse species of forams" traced back to a common ancestor, it's roughly comparable to tracing cows and lions back to a common ancestor.)

But animals the size of a grain of sand aren't glamorous. The fossils look like tiny specks unless you look at them through a low-power microscope. Almost no one has ever heard of "forams". Forams are a type of plankton, and while many people have heard of plankton almost no one knows or cares about it.

So the elephant in the room is that we *do* have a continuous and complete fossil record for a significant chunk of the tree of life. The best possible record a scientist would wish for documenting the fact of evolution in extraordinary detail. And virtually no one has heard of it because it's an incredibly obscure and otherwise unremarkable branch of almost microscopic animals.

The glorious fossil record 19 November 1998: [nature.com] The fossil record may not be complete for all groups at all times and in all places. But, argues Dr Paul Pearson, when we have reason to believe that it is, the dates that can be assigned to fossils are invaluable for unravelling the paths of evolution.

PAUL PEARSONIn The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin lamented that the imperfection of the fossil record detracts from the glory of geology. Fossilization is such a rare and capricious event, our collections are so poor, and sedimentary formations are so full of gaps, that Darwin could not point to a single example where fossils in successive geological strata showed evolution from one species to another.

Unknown to Darwin, uninterrupted sedimentation does occur in the open ocean, especially on aseismic ridges and plateaux. These areas experience a continuous rain of particles to the sea bed, and are among the most geologically quiescent places on Earth. A steady build-up of sediment is the result.

Now, after thirty years of systematic ocean drilling, many of these sites can be studied. Piston coring generally allows hundreds of meters of sediment to be fully recovered, spanning millions of years of deposition. Where gaps occur, they can easily be identified.

There's a problem with the "why haven't we found more fossils" question, and you touch on it. Wiki says we have about 30 T. Rex specimens. If we assume they lived 28 years on average (research indicates that's near the top of the range), and there were only about 1000 alive at once (probably a low estimate), and they existed for about a million years, that comes out to about 35,000,000 total T. Rexes. Which means we've only found one in a million.

Not every Biblical scholar agrees in a global interpretation of the flood. Here's a pretty decent site [thestonescryout.com] put up by a Christian geologist if you'd like to see. He also has a section taking apart young earth speculations from a scientific basis.

Regardless of motives, if side A can present facts that punch holes in side B's argument, shouldn't a scientist sit up and take note? And that's true no matter which side is which.

Sure, scientists listen when someone spots a potential flaw or inconsistency in theory. However, that neither invalidates the theory nor provides any support for alternate theories in the evolution vs creationism argument. Creationist want people to think because they can point out what they consider as flaws in evolutionary theory, such as gaps in the fossil trail, that their theory is thus equally valid. Sorry, science doesn't work that way. If it did, then the theory we were put here by ancient astronaut

Let me restate my concluding point in light of that statement: use valid reasoning, whatever your purpose may be.

Whether you're seeking to discredit them or not, you were providing invalid reasoning. Few things annoy me more than people I agree with giving the other side valid ammunition to make an invalid point.:P

Let me restate my concluding point in light of that statement: use valid reasoning, whatever your purpose may be.

Whether you're seeking to discredit them or not, you were providing invalid reasoning. Few things annoy me more than people I agree with giving the other side valid ammunition to make an invalid point.:P

So here is my reasoning:

Evolution is a theory that uses the scientific method to test it. Creationism as a belief that can neither be proved or disproved.

If you want to debate X vs Y you need a common reference to use for comparison so you can reach some conclusion on which side has better made their argument. If it is the scientific method, then both sides must be able to use it to test their theory.

Since that is not possible in this case because each side bases their conclusions on a different frame of reference, a debate accomplishes nothing in terms of which theory (in scientific terms - which I use here since Creationists argue their theory is equally valid as evolution since both are "theories" and neither can be conclusively proven correct) is a better model of observed phenomena and more predictive. Therefore, why debate?

Since one side's POV is predicated on a belief that can be neither proven nor disproven, there isn't a question of validity of the belief because, well, they believe it is true. Since you cannot prove it isn't true, there is nothing to discredit since it is simply what they believe. When any points can be explained away by "It's God's will" or "God did that to test us and our faith" there really isn't room for a reasoned discussion. Again, why debate?

Finally, the existence of a creator in no way means evolution cannot be the mechanism which resulted in life as we know it today. If you did debate, you could end it at the start by saying"Sure, God could have created man; he simply used evolution to do so. After all, who are we to question how God does what God does; we must just seek to understand how God does it. Now, let's discuss why God created the earth more than 6000 years ago and dinosaurs didn't coexist with "modern" mankind."

In the end, faith and science can, and do, coexist quite nicely. So, to answer "why debate?," ask "Who gains from it?" Creationists want to make their position appear to be worthy of the same consideration as the scientific theory of evolution. Not just to believe in one and not the other, but to give their POV equal time in scientific debate. Debating recognizable figures form science helps accomplish that and I think it is wrong for scientists to do so. That's my belief

So, to close, I am genuinely curious what you find invalid in my reasoning.

You must be completely unaware of how creationist "arguments" work. You're debating a bunch of stuff that is either irrelevant to the discussion, or just plainly made up. Since they have unlimited supply of made-up "facts", there's no way to have any real-time debate. There's literally no way to prepare to debate them and have any chance to offer even a semblance of finishing with an upper hand. It's a well-understood tactic, and they take full advantage of it. You'd need to have dozens of researchers on re

Perhaps that's because you have a naive notion of "color". Star "color" is a complex spectrum with features that correspond to the different elements that make up the stars composition. There are peaks that correspond to hydrogen, helium, etc., in various amounts, all the elements that make up the stars composition. Red shift for example is not just a matter of a single color moving to the red, but the entire spectrum element signature of the star is shifted, which can be readily differentiated from a s

While I agree with the general concept that everything should be examined and not taken at face value I would stress that this is not equivalent to "my non-fact based theory deserves as much time and attention as your evidence-based theory."

Ken Ham cannot provide a reasonable point-counterpoint because all he can do is make assertions that sound like science but are in fact not. It doesn't matter how polite and well spoken he is.

As Issac Asimov stated:“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

The only value that this 'debate' will have is it will further reinforce exactly how delusional creationism is.

If anything, Ham has the superior credentials because this is related to his field of study. Of course, paper is just paper, so that's why we have these debates. I appreciate the play on his last name, but whoever rolls out the ad hominems just because he disagrees with creationism is doing himself a disservice.

I take from this short statement the same sentiment that Bruce Schneier was speaking about, when he stopped whining about how everything "security theater" was completely irrelevant, and started exploring the real and tangible impact and importance of the feeling of safety IN ADDITION TO actual safety controls. You cannot just dismiss grandma's warm and fuzzy acceptance of strict authoritarian searches, you have to actually include it in the calculus, the whole of which can inform the security methodology.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. [schneier.com] The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Religion is the same: you can't just dismiss religion, it's a palpable phenomenon for a large number of stakeholders. Often, you can coexist with their philosophy while still doing real science. Galileo wasn't locked up in house arrest for his science, he was locked up for being an ass to the church. The church actually had little problem with the already-common views on the shape of the solar system, and would have "come around" on the matter much faster without his goading.

Actually, Galileo Galilei had the explicit permission from the Pope to explore and to research a heliocentric view of the sky, provided he didn't call his own results the absolute truth and any other view false. Also, Galileo Galileis works were never listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, thus the Catholic church never viewed his worldview as heretical. On the other hand, they had to be published with a comment regarding their validity, basicly a disclaimer that this book contains the view of the author, which is not necessarily the accepted doctrine of the Catholic church.

In the 17th century, the Catholic church was very interested in new astronomic research and results, because this was the Age of Discovery, and astronomy was important for the explorers to navigate and to cartograph the world. Everything that improved upon the results of the Ptolemaic view of the solar system was welcome. Recalculating of the Equinoxe lead to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 in all Catholic states. The results of Copernicus, of Kepler and Tycho Brahe were considered pretty interesting, provided they allowed for a better way to calculate the stellar and planetary positions. When Ole Rømer in 1676 was able to show and calculate, that light has an finite speed using the Galilean Moons, he didn't get any ban from the Catholic church - this was three decades after Galilei's conviction.

They usually boil down to who's the better public speaker. A written debate where there's time to think and avoid misstatements and marshal the best evidence and arguments might be useful, but a verbal debate's just a stunt.

Bill Nye is an experienced public speaker, with the unusual ability to condense difficult and/or complex ideas into bite-size pieces. I've never seen Ham speak, but as Nye has facts, logic and authority on his side I can't help but think this should be entertaining at the least.

I've heard Ham speak, he's not inexperienced. He is also in command of his facts and excels in making is point in easy to understand. I suspect that Nye will be at a disadvantage, unless he has studied the creationist positions and arguments well. I can assure you that Ham has studied evolution and is ready to debate the ideas and can articulate his position well. He's written a couple of books on this subject. Nye had better be prepared.

I expect that, as in politics, what observers will take away from this debate will be largely defined by what opinion and world view they bring in. Few will be swayed, although I expect many will be forced to think deeper about what they choose to believe on both sides. Which in my book, is generally a good thing.

Ham and AIG (pretty much synonymous) present everything in dogmatic absolutes. This over-states their case. It sounds great...at first. But when Proverbs 18:17 comes into play, the case becomes weaker because of it.Ham and AIG have a history of distorting things like sanatizing/editing quotes from people to make them appear to say something they are not. Their recent Spurgeon sermon was a great and predicted example of this. They removed his mention

You keep using that word. I do no think it means what you think it means.

Seriously though, I'm not sure Mr. Ham is going to actually respond to Bill Nye. If Mr. Nye responds, and Mr. Ham doesn't, it only puts the "science" of creationism in a valid light, as if it were worth debating.

Here's hoping they stay mostly on whether it should or should not be taught in schools, not whether either is true or not. Science isn't so much about "truth" but about the best understanding based on available evidence. That is what should be taught, right from the get go.

It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.

It's not about convincing Ham. It's about exposing Ham's congregation to actual arguments. If fundie parents sit down and watch this with their kids, the kids might come away with a few new ideas. That's a good thing.

Anyone with a web browser can see the falsity (indeed the sheer inanity) of Ham's claims. Debating people like Ham only gives them a platform, and in a peculiar way gives them legitimacy. It would be rather like a historian debating a Holocaust denier. Sure, the historian will probably be able to trounce such a person, but at the expense of giving the denier a platform and the inherent legitimacy that goes along with "I want you to be an interlocutor."

Ham's nonsense was debunked long ago (in many cases long before Ham was even born). At this point I doubt even Ham believes it any more, but it's a way to make some cash.

The idea that the best way to deal with Creationists is to ignore them is a ridiculous one. These people don't go away if you ignore them. On the contrary, you have to engage them. You have to deal with their claptrap whenever and wherever you find it, because these people have political power in this country.

I never said ignore them. I'm just saying debating them is the wrong way to go about it. On the first score, Duane Gish's infamous approach to debating; the Gish Gallop, is used by a lot of Creationists. A large number of claims are thrown out, almost all spurious, but so thoroughly overwhelm the other debater that the Creationist seems to have won. On the other score, it gives them the venue and legitimacy they crave.

It's basically the same thing the global warming skeptics do: "the climate always changes," "we have data for only 0.01% of Earth's history," "humans are small and Earth is big so humans can't affect Earth," "the warming stopped 20 years ago," "carbon dioxide is plant food," "it was warmer in the past," "warming is a good thing." All these statements are easy to throw out, but they take time to explain why they don't mean we shouldn't reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the people who have already made up their minds about which way they believe don't listen to the long-winded explanation and just take the snarky remark and repeat it.

Anyone with a web browser can see the falsity (indeed the sheer inanity) of Ham's claims

They can, but probably won't. How many of Ham's congregation do you think have read talk origins? Why would they, when Ham has all the answers?

So how do you get them to even listen to opposing arguments? This debate is a good way. Even if these people are coming just to see Ham speak, they have to listen to Nye in order to evaluate Ham's performance. In the process, some of them might realize that evolution isn't as

How many Creatonists do you suppose even pay attention to such debates. Believe me, I spent a fifteen years debating Creationists on talk.origins, and I saw maybe one Creationist in all that time start to question their world view. The rest were proof against any evidence, and even after a claim was debunked, the very same person would, a few weeks or months later, trot it out again.

Debating Creationists does no good, and in some ways probably does harm.

It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.

It's not about convincing Ham. It's about exposing Ham's congregation to actual arguments. If fundie parents sit down and watch this with their kids, the kids might come away with a few new ideas. That's a good thing.

In America, at least, it has long seemed that watching a debate is more about choosing one's side and cheerleading on its behalf than about analyzing facts.

Facts can backfire and increase certainty in falsehoods -- http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as

Well, everyone claims moral superiority (I think you just did right there). Only some vociferously base their measure of moral superiority on staying away from hookers and cocaine (in-between bouts of hookers and cocaine).

This debate will not convince anyone, even if Ham doesn't successfully pull rhetorical tricks to make it appear to dumbasses that he's being intellectually honest(and he does, Gish Gallop is the word of the day). The only real result is that his failing museum will get enough publicity among culture warriors to pull it out of bankruptcy.

That's it. It's free financial support for a de-educator and nothing else.

Except that your "poking of holes" does nothing to actually prove your point. I have yet to see a Creationist willing to stand up and offer their points in a valid scientific setting. Their entire argument is "Well it's right because the Bible says so", despite all the evidence to the contrary. It's nothing new. Despite evidence showing the sun was the center of our galaxy, the all-knowing Church cried "heresy" because it was against their beliefs.

I'm guessing there will be a Gish Gallop somewhere: Ham will throw a ton of arguments at once, each taking only a few sentences to make and many minutes to counter. It's a sneaky debate tactic, but effective.

Even if Ham leaves out the Bible verses/devil talk and goes straight "Intelligent Design" (aka Creationism Where God Is Hinted At Instead Of Explicitly Mentioned), Ham can toss "talking points" out faster than Bill can refute because it takes less time to say "X is a reason Evolution is false" than it takes to give the proof why that isn't the case.

What's the point of a 'debate' where one side is held to rigorous standards of proof (including the proving of negatives!) and the other side is allowed to just make up whatever they want to support their argument?

This is a bad idea because it gives an air of credibility where it doesn't belong. What's next, debating 9/11 truthers? I respect Bill Nye and his decision, however i feel he degrades himself doing this.

It gives them a bit of credibility that Nye is doing this in the first place, yes. But creationism already has credibility among many in the American public. Ham has to keep that going through the debate. If he comes off as ranting or raving, then he will lose much of that credibility.

Many creationists (not all, of course) that I've met have been, in most other respects, smart and rational people. They were simply taught from a young age that their worldview was right, and that any evidence to the contr

I love Bill Nye's work, but personally I think he made a mistake in getting involved in this. He's not going to convince the die-hard creationists of anything. The only thing that can be accomplished here is to provide the nutter museum high-profile publicity (which is, almost certainly, the reason Ham was interested in doing this in the first place).

Creationism is, even still, a fringe group of nutters that seem to psychologically thrive off of single-minded obstinance and a belief of personal exceptionalism in their willingness to throw away actual logic and facts. The fact that their beliefs are so fringe is the reason why, almost anywhere else in society outside their individual congregations or this crazy freak show^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMuseum they have to try and water it down by calling it "Intelligent Design" in an attempt to get somewhat more rational people to go along with it.

What evidence is there to indicate that spontaneous generation occurred? There is none. However there is a lot of evidence that spontaneous generation did not occur (left handed amino acids). Just because spontaneous generation correlates with your beliefs does not make it any more valid?

What evidence is there to indicate that intelligent creation occurred? There is none. However there is a lot of evidence that intelligent creation did not occur (decrease of entropy in a closed system has never been observed). Just because intelligent creation correlates with your beliefs does not make it any more valid. (That wasn't a question.)

This isn't going to be pretty. Just as the oil industry uses FUD to create false "uncertainties" about climate science, Ken Ham misrepresents evolutionary science to make it appear that there is a debate. There is no way for a logical person like Nye (who is a mechanical engineer by training, BTW) to effectively counteract Ham's bullshit.

The very fact that this debate is happening is already a win for Ham (and not just because of the millions of dollars that AIG is raking in): The amount of media coverage that this "debate" has received creates the impression that there is a debate to be had - when the basic science is very well-understood and unambiguous. Ham's work is FUD at its finest.

Sadly I agree. Nye does a lot of guest spot on pseudo news shows. He's very good at writing and a master at presenting scripted material, but he's not a great off the cuff debater. Nye tends to get side tracks and has trouble packaging the argument into a limited time slot when he doesn't have the time to refine a script. Neil deGrasse Tyson is far better at this sort of thing but I he would never do a debate like this.

Why do I think Ken Ham will "win" this debate? Well, not because I think Ken will prove conclusively that Evolution is wrong and Creationism is right. I don't believe that at all. Evolution has a ton of evidence supporting it and Ken would have to pull out an Everest-sized mountain of hard evidence (*not* coming from "the Bible says...") to even come close to proving Creationism.

The reason Ken will "win" is because when Creationists "debunking" Evolution, they don't require proof. They spew a talking point or three and then declare victory. Those supporting Evolution, however, are careful to lay out all of the facts and supporting evidence. This takes more time than spewing talking points. Ken will rattle off a dozen talking points and Bill will only have time to tackle one or two. Of course, given enough time, he could refute every talking point Ken Ham spews, but I'm sure Ken can toss out the talking points faster than Bill Nye can refute them merely because refuting with evidence takes more time than making a baseless accusation.

So unless Ken speaks in slow-motion and Bill Nye channels an auctioneer, Ken Ham will "win" the debate.

Nye isn't stupid, he's thought about the implications of this debate. He's already talked about the promotion of the debate as a leveling effect of the two approaches, when really they are nowhere similar. (Creation Mythology and Scientific Inquiry).

However, I think if Nye plays his cards right, he'll not fall into the trap of a tit-for-tat banter of each little Creationist pseudo-doubt. Instead, he'll address the general sociology of the subject: The Christian religion is just one of dozens of creation myths, popular in certain places of the world at this time in history. It simply cannot admit it is wrong, although it has been proven wrong many times and simply abandoned those historical issues (Copernicus onward, for just a few examples). Additionally, there are still the hangups in Christianity with gender (both women and gays) as lesser actors on the stage. Combined with the peculiar Politically-rightward stance in the US, defining their positions on the environment, poverty and interventionism - Christianity cannot explain many parts of the modern world well, let alone creation.

Nye could also simply state that there are too many religions to include them all in an Origins class, and all of them arrive with only scriptural evidence that it's best left to a comparative-studies class on mythologies. Which is exactly where they are today.

Also, if everyone started empirical scientific exploration over again (really, we do this all the time in teaching) - the same models would be arrived at - simply because the models fit the observations. They aren't dictated from any secret cabal, exactly opposite the Christian method. Nye can do this, as well as any of us. The evolutionary discrepancies Ham will blubber on about are not worth the time, but this entire use of one religion to define all things in the universe can easily be made to look silly.

why do you follow religion A? accident of birth: you were born in a country where most people follow A. and so, you are taught and are 'sure' that A is true.

if you were born in country B, you'd be 'sure' that B's religion is true and factual.

this is the most powerful argument I've ever heard for why one religion is no better (or accurate) than another. yes, you are 'sure' about yours just like they are 'sure' about theirs. what makes yours uniquely true and theirs wrong?

it may take years for that to sink in, but eventually, a thinking person has to understand the global implications of localized religions and how they can't all be right (and actually, they are all dead-wrong!)

Both sides will remain unchanged by the debate; but somewhere in Ken Ham's intended audience there is a child just hungry enough to latch on to a morsel of truth and doubt. This will be the child's foundation for escape from that crippling dogmatic world.

This is those children's first and maybe only opportunity for scientific education.

I hope every new earth denialist logs in and lets their children watch as Ken Ham "wins."

I think it is also reasonable to mention that by population most "Christians" belong to sects that admit the scientific fact that evolution is reality. Catholicism is a large group, the largest Christian group, and they have accepted evolution as fact, that isn't a recent thing. There are many many groups that worship the Abrahamic god without willful ignorance on this subject.

This isn't Christians vs Science... this is "the craziest of the Christians" vs Science

I am a creationist myself (in the minority here on Slashdot) and frequently listen to Christian radio. I often find myself cringing when Ken Ham's little segments come on. He usually uses circular reasoning to prove his point - the following is an exact paraphrase of something I heard him say recently: "The Bible states that the world is less than 6000 years old and therefore evolution is wrong. Because evolution is wrong because the Bible says it is wrong, we have proved the evolutionists to be an unreliable source and therefore we can not trust the evolutionists criticism of the Bible."
I personally know a number of scientists who believe in creation/intelligent design (plus one atheist leaning agnostic with doubts about the probability of life arising by chance) who would represent the creation side of the argument better than Ken Ham.

I am very disappointed because I am an atheist and a science enthusiast, and I feel like Ken Ham actually won this debate. I don't think he is right about Christianity or the bible. I think he argued his point in a way that was better than Bill Nye. I think the points Ken Ham brought up were flawed, but I thought they at least attempted to answer the right questions. I felt Bill Nye's answers seemed to indicate that he didn't even really understand what Ken Ham was saying.

As an example, Ken Ham was forced to repeat over and over that he did not think that the assumption that natural laws were constant was correct. Bill Nye kept pooring on more examples of how science, which inherently makes this assumption (e.g. that radioactive decay rate has remained the same) shows that Ken Ham is wrong, but it doesn't. This debate should have taken a philosophical turn towards the question of whether it's reasonable to assume natural laws are constant. If Bill had said "I just don't accept that this could be possible", I would be ok with it, but it seemed like Bill Nye was unaware that this was where the debate was going.

I just don't think Bill Nye is a good debater, nor do I think he has the expertise to really make his points confidently. I saw Bill Nye debate Richard Lindzen in a short TV segment, and Bill Nye just seemed like a climate change believer/cheerleader rather than someone who actually knew anything about climate change.

There is nothing more frustrating than watching someone argue a position you hold badly.

All over the internet I see people proclaiming that Bill Nye won the debate, but that's only because he was on the side that they agree with (and presumably still agree with). He did not really present any arguments that, if I were a young earth creationist, I would find even remotely convincing or even thought provoking. He seemed just to regurgitate the same statements about how science is great without actually meeting Ken Ham's claims head on. He seemed to not even understand Ken Ham's attacks on a philosophical level.

If you want to see an example of how I think these debates should have been conducted (from the secular point of view), I would refer you to debates between Dan Dennett and various theologians. Dan is a really great thinker and the people he debates (while wrong), are people who would probably destroy Bill Nye in a debate.

I will say that at the end, I was satisfied with Bill Nye's answer to the question about Evolution and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. He correctly brought up the fact that earth is not a closed system. And I was happy that he ended by stressing the point that what makes "normal (i.e. secular) science" different from Ken Ham's brand of creationism in terms of "historical science", is that normal science makes predictions that turn out to be true. Ken Ham's citations of predictions made by creationism are only back formations. He can't come up with any examples of predictions that were not known to be true when they were made. It's easy to say that the Bible predicted everything we see today. The way to test a prediction is to make a new one that isn't known to be true yet.

I think Ken Ham is an interesting debater, and I'd love to see him debate someone a little more clever than Bill Nye

It would appear to the viewer then that believing in the existence of natuaral law is a question of opinion. That it simply is a point of view. And that is exactly what creationists are stating. They say: hey why don't we get the chance to represent our point of view in the classroom? Our ideas are just as valid and scientifically sound.

In this respect I thought it was good that Bill Nye brought up the difference that creationism really makes no useful predictions in the way that normal science does. I would have maybe attacked his assertions that creationism *has* made predictions that have come true, on the basis that these examples were made after the fact to try to fit the bible.

I would have also attacked the assertion that creationism and science are compatible because of all the examples of creationism and scientists. Just because

The answer to that question, from a creationist statndpoint, is the same reason that God allegedly created the first human beings as fully formed adults. Merely minutes old in actuality, but by all outward appearances fully matured, as if they had really grown up from childhood. To a hypothetical visitor from the future who was accustomed only to what they understood as the normal passage of time, even mere weeks after creation, it would invariably appear that things had existed for much longer than they actually had... but that's only because that's all that person knows, because they weren't actually around at the beginning to see it all unfold... not out of any real sense on God's part to deceive anyone, as it were.

First off, there is a lot of confusion about what "creationists" actually believe. We have our fundies like everybody else, but the fact of the matter is that even the more rational creationists will disagree about creationism. From a Christian standpoint, we've got two parts - primary doctrine, and secondary doctrine. Genesis 1:1 is primary doctrine: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". This is agreed upon by basically everyone in the creationist camp - that everything in the known universe was created by God.

Everything else, regarding God's implementation, and the methods He used to actually perform the act of creation...that's secondary doctrine, and in any room of ten creationists, you'll have a dozen answers. This is an important distinction to make, because, if I may get on my soapbox for a quick moment, Slashdot seems to correlate "creationist" with "6000 years, fossils-meant-to-test-us, God gives 'Murica the right to bear arms" fundies, as opposed to "an individual who believes that there is a Supreme Deity in charge of causing the universe to exist". Simply because Biblical creationists don't have every single answer regarding God's implementation as to how He constructed the universe, and because we don't all 100% agree on the possible ways that God could have done it...doesn't mean that everyone who believes Genesis 1:1 is a completely irrational fundie...okay I'll get back off my soap box and actually get on with answering the question...

Biblical creationism based on Genesis 1 leaves a few avenues of possibility. First, the word "day" is frequently pointed to as being suspect in the first, second, and third "days" of the creation account...because the earth didn't exist until the fourth day. The argument that the term 'day' is not a literal 24 hour period is substantiated by the fact that the original Hebrew language used for the first day doesn't use the term "first day", but "day one", indicating that it was not compared to the other days in those terms. It's entirely possible that the first three days were entirely different units of time. Additional questions raised in this regard is the fact that the Bible repeatedly refers to God as an Entity that is not bound by time, and thus time itself being a creation...yet 'time' is not listed as one of the things that God created, nor gravity, magnetism, or the forces of Newtonian physics, or quantum physics. Since we understand that all of these laws manipulate time given sufficient amounts of these forces, there's plenty of reasons to believe that the notion of a 'day' was not a 24 hour period. Those on the 6-literal-day side of the debate point to the fact that the word 'day', even in the Hebrew, is used solely for the 24-hour time span, and never for an 'age' or any other indiscriminate span of time, so the authors of the Bible could have used the word 'age' if so directed by God, but did not. Whether human error, 'poetic license', or because God builds universes in a week...is amongst the points of secondary doctrine about which Ken Ham and Kent Hovind have gone back and forth about repeatedly.

With regards to the question about the ~6,000 light-year range of light we'd expect to see, the best answers I can personally give is two fold:1. If we're assuming that 24 hour days are correct, then one could argue that it's no more difficult for God to make photons-in-transit from stars than it would be for Him to create the stars themselves. For bonus points, consider that 'light' was the very first thing created. To answer the question of "why would He do that", all I can say is "I'm trying to figure out the whole lice thing myself..."2. If we're assuming 6 'ages' of significant time, then one could argue that there would be plenty of time between the formation of the stars and the creation of mankind, so the light-in-transit could easily have a few million year head start to work with.

See, you've got this entirely backwards here. If creation is fact, you should be able to infer the Christian doctrine from observations made in the real world. Forget about what's in the book, and just look at the world. Do your observations lead you to the same conclusion the book does?

Everything else, regarding God's implementation, and the methods He used to actually perform the act of creation...that's secondary doctrine, and in any room of ten creationists, you'll have a dozen answers.

That's because they're all making it up. If you ask a room of biologists about the actual method by which speciation occured, you'll get one answer. Evolution by natural selection. That's because that's where the evidence actually leads.

First off, there is a lot of confusion about what "creationists" actually believe.

If you tried believing only in what there is evidence to support there would be a lot less confusion.

How does one conclusively prove "there was a Creator", any more than one can conclusively prove "All matter existed as pure energy before the energy existed as energy"? Again, internally, creationists debate implementation and methodology, but saying that you can deduce that there was a Creator based upon following what previous iterations until you get to Creation itself...makes very little sense any more than you can take Mass Effect lore and follow its origins all the way back to a hard drive at Bioware.

There is an interesting and informative debate to be had. But like any debate, it is a waste of time for those who remain closed-minded (on either side of any issue) and only looking for a win.

Consider that the Big Bang happened 14 billion years ago, whereas Man has only been on the scene for about 200,000 years. There is probably a large pool of knowledge that is not available to Man. Based on elapsed time and size of the universe compared to Earth, you'd have to be pretty arrogant to think that Ma